Oyster Readings

2022, Climate House, Edinburgh

I performed Oyster Readings for Cooking Sections’ exhibition ‘In the Eddy of the Stream’. An intimate performance that uses oysters to better understand the environment, ecology, history and future of Scotland’s coasts.

Press:

“The tales they tell of my oyster are so mesmerising – how it grew and where, what the shape, colour and undulating nuances of its black-and-white striped shell reveal about its decade of experiences – as to open up an oceanic history. Hector Dyer’s readings (weekends only; book now, book swiftly) are part of In the Eddy of the Stream, a beautiful exhibition at Inverleith House in Edinburgh’s botanical gardens concerned with the sea creatures, flora and fauna in the context of history and politics.” (Laura Cumming, The Guardian)

“Where the artistic imagination takes off the most, however, is in the oyster readings (weekends only, book in advance, get one if you can), a kind of bivalve divination. Starting from the fact that an oyster is a book of its own history, its layers recording good and bad years, climate shifts and so on, it spins out into an insightful journey into what interests us most: ourselves.” (Susan Mansfield, The Scotsman)